Snapshots

It's hard to believe that in 2 days I will be in Haiti. It's especially hard to believe when it looks like this outside:

We have somehow managed to pack everything into 22 suitcases. To give you an idea of how challenging that was, take a look at my friend, Julie, who arrived in style on our "packing day". We have more gifts, clothes, medical supplies, toiletries, and office supplies than I thought possible.
We have money for the guest house, money for transportation, and money for tips. We have a suitcase chock full of goodies for the kids and edible essentials for ourselves (PB, granola bars, gatorade mix etc). Everyone is vaccinated and faithfully following our "Malaria Mondays" routine. We have passports, we have rides to the airport, we have pillows for the longest lay-over ever, and we have our cameras ready to roll. What we don't have is confidence.

On Monday, the Dean of Nursing at our university called my father to warn him about the risks of traveling to Haiti. She mentioned that she intended on contacting everyone's parents so that they could be fully aware of the danger. Rather than let her scare all those parents to death by calling them out of the blue, I notified all my team members and they each alerted their parents to the upcoming call. Most of their parents are worried, but not to the extent that they would pull their daughters off the trip. Praise God. However, seeing that their parents are so concerned, getting a warning from the Dean, and reading the US travel advisory has made my girls rather skittish. One of them even said, "I just want to be sure that I'm going to get home alive from this trip." I have talked to almost all of them today and many of them express serious fears about our safety. We will be taking every precaution and I will be trusting God for our well-being, but it's hard to explain that in a satisfactory manner. So at this point, we still have all 11 girls going, but more than half of them are going in anxiety. I'm praying for miraculous changes of heart so that my teammates can get the most out of their time in Haiti. And, selfishly, so that I can spend less time reassuring people and more time loving my favorite kids in the whole world.